Top 5 PPC Pitfalls

I just read a great article on Pay Per Click in the Multichannel Merchant about the top 5 things marketers get wrong in PPC campaigns… thought you would find this interesting – especially if you attended our Google AdWords Webinar.  If you missed this Webinar, just view our on-demand library to get the basics on starting your own PPC campaign. 

Check-out these 5 pitfalls to help you to…

• drive qualified prospects to your site
• improve click-through rates
• be more strategic about your bidding
• lower your costs-per-click

All Aboard the SEM Bandwagon!

A recent Forrester study shows what all of us already know.  Marketers will continue to shift dollars from traditional media and traditional direct marketing to online direct marketing. 

I like Target Marketing Magazine’s research summary overviewing the growth factors in SEM, SEO, online advertising (a.k.a., Pay-Per-Click) and Email Marketing which are among the listed 16 online marketing trends.

More than 80% of marketers are using paid search and SEO and plan to expand search into more segments. As consumers search more online, Google’s AdWord inventory continues to grow.  All music to marketers’ ears as you expand your paid search and SEO efforts. 

Online advertising, “performance-based” media buys and integrated email marketing are also slated for substantial growth through 2014.

Think “Leads,” Not “Web Site Visitors”

We’re in the process of updating our Web site (well, when aren’t we in the process of updating or optimizing our Web site?) and maybe many of you are doing same right now. Here’s some advice to make sure you’re getting the most out of your Web site: Stop thinking in terms of VISITORS. Think in terms of LEADS.

What’s the Difference? As marketers, we can get into a rut with our buzz words and even use some words interchangeably. This can inadvertently affect our strategies.

For example, you’re going to tackle your Web site very differently if you’re thinking about attracting qualified leads and how to manage those leads versus trying to get the most possible “hits” to your site.

More Leads, Better Qualified, Now What? Well, if you were opening a storefront, you would make sure that everything was organized and setup properly before flipping-on the “open” sign. The same is true for your Web site. You need to make sure that you’re ready to handle those online leads once they’re in your “door.” Make sure your sales funnel structure is ready to handle the leads properly – or you can loose that prospect forever.

Also, I can’t say it enough – INTEGRATION. To get the most out of your Web site and online marketing, you need to integrate across all of the channels that touch your customer – both online and offline.

Why digital makes sense in your marketing mix

Sometimes the most targeted campaign is still missing something.

By: Adam Henige

While more and more organizations have at least begun to dip their toes into the world of search marketing, some still fail to see how it will fit into a traditional marketing campaign or precisely how it supplements more traditional methods.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have this discussion in-person with a variety of audiences. It’s been well documented how successful email marketing and direct marketing campaigns can be, particularly when built on excellent lists.

Add onto your mail/email marketing with traditional media buys in print/radio/television with highly targeted demographic ads and you’ve really covered your bases, right? Well, from a push marketing perspective, you sure have (and we’re not even getting into newer media like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook). 

But, what about those people whom you just can’t seem to target?

There will always be a group of people who want what you’re selling, but either don’t know they can get it, or don’t know that you provide it. But when they finally decide to look for a solution, how will they find you?

Well, think about it yourself. How do you find things? Conservative studies have shown that from a retail perspective over 42% of people find Web sites by using search engines. More importantly, compared to the other forms of advertising, a Web site provides you with a stationary audience.

The more complex, innovative or differentiated your product is, the more important it is to provide a detailed and immersive Web experience. Companies who get this have integrated their marketing strategies - using traditional media as a vehicle that often supports a strategic Web experience that captures and maintains the interest of potential customers, hopefully for multiple visits.

So while traditional media can certainly be an effective tool to finding your target audience and generating leads and sales, online search helps widen the net.

Especially in this day and age — it’s just not an option to leave money on the table by missing customers who may literally be heading to Google and asking for your product, which is why digital marketing makes more and more sense as a piece of the marketing mix.

Adam Henige is Managing Partner of Netvantage Marketing, a Strategic Partner of ICS located in East Lansing, Michigan.

2010 DMA Should Be Interesting

2009 Direct Marketing Association's Annual Conference Oct. 17-21

I can’t remember a year where we have had as much change in our marketing world.  With the economy struggling, this alone has had significant impact.  Add onto this the evolution of new digital tools such as Search, Social Media and Mobile and this year’s Direct Marketing Association’s national convention is bound to be interesting. 

Yet my initial day at the conference reinforces much of what I thought.  While  new tools and mediums evolve, much of the foundation for targeted marketing remains the same:

• Test, test, test:   Continues to be the foundation for targeted media.  With today’s powerful analytics, you can set up your testing strategies to optimize your marketing efforts whether it is your direct marketing acquisition effort, search or your web site. 
• Permission-based:  Permission-based marketing comes in the form of many names now (i.e. opt-in, preference centers, social media invitations), but a constant thread has been forming in marketing for over a decade.  Today’s marketers realize that putting the consumer in the driver’s seat of their communications is the key in today’s world.  Now there are just more targeted consumer options to opt-into than ever before.
• Technology Centric:  Technology continues to drive our advances on many fronts.  More user friendly tools to use without tapping the IT department.  Increased abilities to personalize the medium to known customer attributes, easier and lower cost tools to manage all these efforts.
• Integration:  A couple of decades ago, it was integrating targeted marketing with mass media to deliver improved performance.  Today, these integration points are still important, but can be taken much further.  Web site integration, retail point of sale, digital targeted media campaigns are now all thrown into the mix as well. 

My point in all this is that while times are changing, likely 99.9+ percent of what we see at this year’s DMA will be based on the foundation already set.   Should be an interesting time to see how the industry is doing and where the experts see it all going.  From my first day in attendance, what is being touted as “new” looks very familiar.

ROI-based Search

Here’s a DMNews article about setting-up a paid search budget based on profitability.  I found it interesting for two reasons.  1)  We just broadcasted a webinar on paid search and discussed budget setup and controls and 2) We just happen to be strategizing on how to expand our own marketing success in paid search from one area of our company to other areas – all, of course, while keeping profitability in mind.

It struck me that the author overlooked some important points to keep in mind when setting-up a profitable paid search budget.

In many cases – including ICS’s – the company has a diverse product / service mix.  So when thinking about what to spend on key paid search terms, don’t just look at the price tag of the search term and the profit margin of the product / service you’re marketing.  Consider search terms that may provide cross-over sales opportunities as well.

Also, ask yourself if you’re using the best possible search term that would provide the highest quality sales leads at the best price… and if you can get some cross-over marketing into other areas of your products and services, then even better.

Chances are there are some lesser cost (and higher sales value) alternatives to that high price search term that could blow your budget’s profitability.

And don’t forget to keep a close eye on your paid search program.  Don’t just set it and forget it.

The great thing is… if your initial keyword selection isn’t giving you the results you thought it would, then you can always adjust your program immediately based on what your response data is telling you.

http://www.dmnews.com/Set-your-search-budget-to-be-based-on-its-profitability/article/139312/

Search Engine Optimization is a long term investment

I was connecting with Adam Henige, our strategic partner from Netvantage Marketing this week about all of the cool and trendy social networking tools that are appearing everywhere it seems.  We are now Twittering on Good Morning America!

But how do these new marketing tools really compare to the fundamentals in the Digital Services arena like Search Engine Optimization.  As Adam explains below, this is more of a longer term investment and very analytically/metric driven.  While the new social networking tools have their place, SEO has proven to be a constant contributor to targeted digital lead generation in the long run.  Take a read through his thoughts below:

We live in an instant gratification world anymore, and it somehow manages to become even more instantaneous with each passing day. Twitter is a perfect example of this.  If you haven’t “tweeted” yet, you’re probably going to be considered unhip by teenagers and the tech savvy, and you’ll also be left out in the dark as to what everyone you know is doing at every second of the day.  Businesses, of course, have jumped on this bandwagon and are courting followers and fans through these channels and (some better than others) promoting products and services and attempting to build brand loyalty.

Some of us who earned our stripes in more traditional online marketing (does anyone remember SEO, pay per click and banner advertising?) are going to have to continue to get better at selling the value of a service that often seems to be getting no results, or moving at a snail’s pace.  Social media appeals so well to the instant gratification crowd, as you can get huge blasts of traffic through to your site from Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon, but often this success is fleeting.  Twitter can be a great tool to engage customers and prospects, but still lacks a great ability to target.

I’ve spent months, and sometimes years on sites to finally get that high ranking that starts driving the “dream traffic” you want to your site.  The hard part is trying to keep someone paying for this service, when all you can show them is an increased ranking…but no revenue.  The truth is, even for highly targeted terms, being on page one of search results simply isn’t good enough to get a significant portion of traffic.  If you’re not in the top three listings, you’re still not even playing the game.  In competitive markets, getting from 15th to 1st can be incredibly difficult, and may take months or years.  But depending on what product or service that keyword relates to, getting to the top can mean literally thousands of visitors coming through to your site who have already expressly stated they want what you have.

Let’s put it this way, if you sold coffee, this would be the equivalent of magically appearing in front of someone right after they decide, “I need a cup of coffee.”  No trip to Starbucks, or the grocery store to look at competitive products, they ask for coffee and you’re there, and you have the first opportunity to sell.  How much is that worth?  And can you afford not to make that investment?  The truth is, if you don’t, someone else will, and those who do won’t be worrying about jumping on the next digital marketing bandwagon, at least not with the same urgency.

Adam Henige is a Managing Partner at Netvantage Marketing, an ICS Strategic Partner specializing in paid search management, SEO, and web analytics.

Offline and Online integration — Little things make a big difference!

This week, I came across an article from JupiterResearch talking about online and offline integration efforts that I thought was pretty strong.  We have been talking about marketing integration for nearly two decades … but now we have more channels to integrate than ever before.

Possibly you have heard the statistic:  “An iProspect’s 2007 study ‘Offline influence on Online Search Behavior Study’ found that 67% of online users were driven to perform a search as a result of an offline marketing message … And 39% of those offline-influenced searchers ultimately made a purchase.

These statistics make a lot of sense to me, but the sad point of the article was that nearly half (45%) of search engine marketers still do not integrate their online and offline efforts. All kinds of reasons came up as to why.  The top reasons were:

• They don’t advertise in offline channels
• Lack the budget
• Lack the resources
• Don’t know better
• Have separate people managing offline efforts … and they are not synchronized with online
• Just don’t see the benefit of integration

In my opinion, a big part of the issue is that while online marketers understand their medium, they really don’t understand the overall disciplines that drive marketing and consumer behavior.   With the online mediums growing so quickly, many have jumped in without fully understanding how to optimize the overall marketing dollars spent.

It not necessarily big things that involve huge investments.  Look at some of these stats:

• 76% of offline offers could not be acted upon online
• 74% of offline keywords were not used online
• 66% did not use the same images and videos offline as online
• 60% did not include their company slogan / tagline  or even their product or service name prominently online

I am sure the economic challenges of 2009 will force some reevaluation in this area.   From my perspective, this is some pretty basic “marketing blocking and tackling”.  While I am happy that we are addressing these key issues with our clients, more education and awareness is needed to connect the best practice results and disciplines with the average company’s marketing efforts.

Where do you go to find information on a business?

We have had some discussion around the office recently on where people go today when they want to find a particular business or business product?  It use to be that our only option was to pull out the “Yellow Pages”.  Obviously today, the Internet has changed our world in this area … but, how many people are really using the Internet instead of the Yellow Pages?

Well, my informal poll is really inconclusive.  Some still use Yellow Pages, some exclusively use the Internet and some use a mix of both depending on what their need is.   I searched the Internet for some more statistical backing in this area.  The reports I found were a little dated and one can only believe that today’s stats would point to an even greater share of consumers using the Internet:

•  –In June 2007, comScore Networks reported that 60% of local consumers now go online to search for local businesses, as opposed to 33% that go first to the printed Yellow Pages.
• –Almost 40% of local shoppers say that a presence on the Internet – or lack of presence – will affect their decision about who they do business with. [Source: Web.com, 2007]
• Nearly 137 billion searches were conducted at the five U.S. core search engines in 2008, representing an increase of
  21 % versus the previous year.  [Source: comScore Networks,  2009]
• Search query growth was driven largely by an increase in searches per searcher, which rose 16% from the previous year, while number of unique searchers grew 6% .   [Source: comScore Networks,  2009]
• Google Sites, which generated nearly 85 billion searches in 2008, accounted for nearly 90 percent of the total growth in
  search query volume during the year.  [Source: comScore Networks,  2009]

Clearly, every business needs to think through how they establish their electronic presence … as it is an increasing part of every company’s marketing efforts.

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